Damon Lindelof Reveals One Regret with Watchmen Season One

The first (only?) season of HBO's Watchmen is now in the rearview mirror, and executive producer Damon Lindelof seems pretty happy with how things went. The critically-acclaimed series was a ratings success and has managed to be the most-praised of all the Watchmen follow-ups, even if Alan Moore is not thrilled that it exists at all. Still, nothing is perfect, and Lindelof admitted in a newly-related interview that he does have a regret as it pertains to the way the season broke down: he would have liked to get a better sense of Lady Trieu (Hong Chau), the trillionaire eccentric who tured out to have deep ties to the original novel.

The character showed up three episodes into a ten-episode season, which was later shortened to nine when the filmmakers wanted to adjust the pacing. And Lindelof says that there was a lot more to her in the writers' room.

"If there are any regrets, it's that we didn't get to dimensionalize Lady Trieu as much as we did in the writer’s room, on the screen," Lindelof told Collider. "Especially given, in my opinion, the magnitude of Hong's performance. I just thought she was fantastic. It was one of those things where we got into the endgame of the season, and it felt like we were moving back too much, between episode seven and eight. We talked about Lady Trieu's childhood, how she became who she was. But, a lot of her backstory got shorthanded between what Bian is saying to Angela and Lady Trieu is saying to Angela, in episode seven."

Of course, he may have an opportunity to address that. After saying in the early days that there was no chance a second season would involve Lindelof, the writer/producer has not ruled out the possibility that somebody else might have an idea to do without him.

"I am deeply, profoundly appreciative for how well received the season has been up until now, and I don’t want to feel like I'm ungrateful, but I still don't have any inclination whatsoever to continue the story, and that is largely and almost exclusively based on the fact that I don't have an idea," Lindelof explained recently. "If I’m going to be involved in any more Watchmen, I should be able to answer the questions, why, and why now, and the answers to those questions shouldn't be, 'Well because that’s what you do, because the first one was good.' I'm not saying there shouldn't be a second season of Watchmen, and I'm not even saying that that season shouldn't feature some of the characters in this season of Watchmen. I just don’t know what it should be."